Friday, 19 October 2007

Support from strange places

Writing in the Spectator, the conservative (and that's an understatement) economist Irving Stelzer provides one of the most succint and powerful defence of inheritance tax.

An inheritance tax is not a death duty. The slogan ‘No taxation without respiration’ is too clever by half. Even a Chancellor of the Exchequer as powerful as the previous occupant of the office could not get a corpse to sign a cheque. It is a tax paid by the recipient of this income, the inheritor, the lucky winner in the sperm lottery.